The supporting partners the London Summit attendees cannot overlook

The London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade is an opportunity for the highest levels of government to come together as a united front against the illegal wildlife trade. The expertise and support of the international community can only bring us closer to achieving the shared goals of the global community.

But as HRH Prince of Wales said: “Neither governments, international organizations, nor private companies can tackle this enormous task alone. It will take action from all of us to beat back this highly organized criminal activity.”

Forging partnerships is a crucial dimension of environmental law enforcement worldwide.

Watch Prince Charles and his son Prince William in this video message supporting the campaign to stop the illegal wildlife trade.

From a criminal perspective, environmental crime is often seen as high-profit, low-risk. There is an absence of detection procedures, which is further complicated by the lack of environmental law enforcement capacity and resources. These realities account for the presence of increasingly sophisticated criminal networks within the illegal wildlife trade.

The trade in products that are the result of elephant, rhinoceros, and tiger poaching continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing environmental law enforcement. IFAW continues to support our work and the capacity building initiatives that are the cornerstone of INTERPOL intelligence-led enforcement.

IFAW’s assistance was crucial to the success of Operation WORTHY, Operation WENDI, and Project WEB to seize ivory, rhino horns, other animal derivatives, and dangerous weapons. It was because of this cooperation that our Environmental Crime Programme agreed to the first-ever Memorandum of Understanding with a non-governmental organization to fight wildlife crime.

I fully expect the 50-plus leaders here at the summit to immediately engage the same organizations that have been supporting the fight against wildlife crime. If we don’t continue to nurture these partnerships, we will indeed be limited in our impact.